As much as I love the man, I find it hard to see him fare better than Merchant against an ATG attack. Merchant's record in England also helps.

Think it more depends on the conditions, rather than the attack. He's smacked Mcgrath, Steyn and almost every decent too good attack on non seaming wickets (and these weren't necessarily flat wickets.) And then also smacked all the spinners on helpful conditions.

People getting a bit carried away by his last 1 and a half years where he has been out of sorts.

But having said that Merchant was quality too, so it's a tough pick.

I'll go with Sunil Gavaskar and Virendra Sehwag because of the way in which Sehwag can hurt the opposition, almost force a result and also put psychological pressure in certain situations. Plus he'll have quality batting in and around him so a bit of leeway in certain situations can be taken.

Sehwag should not have been an opener nor do I think he really wanted to be. Kept talking about preferring to bat number 4 and I think he could have been devastating in that position.

However an opener he was and he changed the game forever with impressionable young bats like Tamim trying and failing to emulate him.

There will always be a place now for run a ball openers - and having grown up in a different generation I think I appreciate openers with a SR of 40 more than those with a SR of 90. (personal preference).

Originally Posted by HeathDavisSpeed

I got great enjoyment in going to the game and shouting "WHY THE **** ISN'T THIS GAME BEING PLAYED AT THE BASIN?!>!?!?" to reasonably significant cheers from the sparse crowd

Proudly against the bring back Bennett movement since he is injury prone and won't last 5 days.

And smalishah's avatar is the most classy one by far Jan certainly echoes the sentiments of CW

Yeah we don't crap in the first world; most of us would actually have no idea what that was emanating from Ajmal's backside. Why isn't it roses and rainbows like what happens here? PEWS's retort to Ganeshran on Daemon's picture depicting Ajmal's excreta

Think it more depends on the conditions, rather than the attack. He's smacked Mcgrath, Steyn and almost every decent too good attack on non seaming wickets (and these weren't necessarily flat wickets.) And then also smacked all the spinners on helpful conditions.

People getting a bit carried away by his last 1 and a half years where he has been out of sorts.

But having said that Merchant was quality too, so it's a tough pick.

I'll go with Sunil Gavaskar and Virendra Sehwag because of the way in which Sehwag can hurt the opposition, almost force a result and also put psychological pressure in certain situations. Plus he'll have quality batting in and around him so a bit of leeway in certain situations can be taken.

Yeah don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to suggest he'll fail, it's just that imo Merchant would be better.

Thats like not selecting Barry Richards for SA, because he only appeared in four tests, or Procter, who only appeared in 7.

The best attack that Merchant ever faced was perhaps the 1936 English attack that consisted of Allen, Gover, Verity, Robins and Hammond. Against those bowlers at Old Trafford he managed a score of 114. That's not bad.

However, while Merchant averaged a very healthy 71.64 in domestic cricket I'm not sure what that means as I can't imagine that the overall quality of Indian bowlers during 1930s-50s would have been very good, especially the quality of fast bowling.

On the other hand Barry Richards scored plenty of runs against Lillee, Roberts, Snow etc in English domestic and WSC cricket, and was therefore able to prove himself against top notch quicks on a regular basis. I'm not sure that we can say the same for Merchant as I don't think that Gover or Allen, or the domestic Indian bowlers were in the same class as the tear-aways of the 1970s.

Here is a Barry Richard's innings where he scored 207 against Lillee, Walker, Gilmour, Bright and Greg Chappell;